The thirteenth group of essays from the 2023 Teddy Rocks Maths Competition. The showcase will take place throughout June and July with the winners being announced at the end.

The competition is organised with St Edmund Hall at the University of Oxford and offers a cash prize plus publication on the university website for the winners. It will be running again in early 2024 so be sure to follow Tom (Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube) to make sure you don’t miss the announcement!

Alejandro uses the premise of stacked chips to discuss three-dimensional coordinate geometry.

This essay provides a proof of an interesting property of the prime numbers.

This essay explores the history of the optimal sphere-packing problem.

This essay looks at how the tools of Game Theory can be applied to criminals and chickens alike.

Rena explains the Japanese art of Sangaku and the history of maths puzzles in Japan.

This essay discusses how the context in which a number is presented can change its meaning.

This essay describes how to develop an Artificial Intelligence that can defeat a world champion chess player.

Cyprian investigates why musical notes may sound different on different instruments.

The essay shows the applicability of maths in a range of different scenarios.

This essays explains the concept behind public-key cryptography and why it is so successful at keeping our information secure.

Adi provides an overview of circle inversion and how it can be applied to solve problems.

This essay describes some of the most prominent search algorithms currently in use.